


Heaven from Hell

by beastofthesky



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Asexuality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 13:25:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beastofthesky/pseuds/beastofthesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fact of the matter is that any way it’s stacked, all he wants is to be around Cas, to live with Sam, to finally be able to breathe without the crushing weight of the Apocalypse on their shoulders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven from Hell

“Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever wonder why we’re here?”'

“It’s one of life’s great mysteries, isn’t it?” He nudges Cas playfully. “Why _are_ we here? Are we the product of some cosmic coincidence, or is there really a god out there, watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff?” Cas is staring at him, completely nonplussed, and he grins. “I dunno, man. But it keeps me up at night.”

“Dean, you know that–”

“I was _joking_ , Cas. It’s a reference.”

Cas gives him this fucking _death stare_ and Dean just laughs and laughs, claps him on the back and drains the rest of his beer.

“I meant, do you ever wonder why we’re here, at this house?” Dean picks at a loose nail on the porch steps. This is going to get very existential, very fast. “The amount of circumstances it’s taken for you, me, and Sam to have ended up here, together, alive, is unimaginable. It’s truly incredible.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he muses. His shoulder brushes lightly against Cas’s and he’s warm, even though all of the layers of clothing between them. “I wouldn’t ask for anything different, though. Apple pie life’s not really for me, you know?”

Cas chuckles in agreement. Dean likes the way his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Do you guys have families? Angels, I mean. Like, getting married, having kids.” Dean’s not sure why but this question really _bugs him_. It never bothered him that Jimmy has – _had_ – a family with a wife and a kid, but the thought of Cas with some fluffy angel wife and their fluffy angel kid really bugs the shit out of him.

And, unless he’s imagining it, Cas is looking awfully uncomfortable.

“Cas?”

“I–” He runs a hand through his hair, one of the few human habits he’s picked up on. Dean likes it. “Dean, as a member of your species and being who you are, I don’t expect you to fully comprehend this.”

Dean side-eyes the fuck out of him.

“Dude, there is _nothing_ you can say that’s going to weird me out. I promise.”

Cas still looks super shifty and uncomfortable, like he’s about to drop something that’s going to make Dean run as fast as he can in the opposite direction.

“Angels are... not creatures of sexuality. We don’t mate, we don’t marry, or have children, or, generally, experience sexual attraction. Gabriel and Anna, having had Fallen the way they had, are a bit of a different story. Instead, it’s– angels are _sensual_ , Dean, not sexual. I don’t function the way you do.” And with that he stands abruptly, and makes to go back in the house.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Dean. He stands up and knocks over the empty bottle in his haste to grab Cas’s wrist. “Were you seriously worried I wouldn’t get it?” Cas doesn’t meet his eyes. “Dude, you didn’t know that people can be asexual too?” At this Cas actually _looks_ at him, and he’s got that stupid big-ass googly kitten eyes thing going on. Dean laughs. “C’mon, Cas. Trust me, it’s not weird or unheard of or anything.” He sits back down and Cas follows him, still with uncertainty in his face. Cas is pressed close to him this time; his bicep and thigh make a warm line against Dean’s and he basks in it.

“It seems I’ve misread humanity yet again,” he says, _almost_ looking like he’s sulking because this is apparently A Thing he didn’t know about, and Cas hates not knowing things. It’s freakin’ adorable. Not that Dean would admit it.

“Yeah, well, tons of people are off the beaten path when it comes to sex,” Dean replies, and brushes some stray dirt off of the back of Cas’s coat. His fingers end up tracing a seam, aimlessly wandering on Cas’s back. “It’s not black and white. According to Sam’s _classifications_ from one of his classes, I am pansexual, pan _sensual_ , and _homo_ romantic.” He ticks them off on his fingers as he goes.

He doesn’t have to mention the fact that it’s really thanks to Cas that he figured out that last one. There’s no point in stating the obvious.

“I see,” Cas muses, and Dean’s glad to hear that his voice is warm. “In that case, I suppose I am asexual, pansensual, and panromantic.”

“You don’t have to put yourself into a box,” Dean says, frowning. “Just exist, or whatever. You don’t have to listen to a bunch of stuffy academics who need to put labels on all their jars.”

“Most people prefer rationalizing things for themselves,” Cas points out, and quite logically.

“Yeah, but I’m not most people,” Dean fires back with a grin. Cas smiles back, one of the rare, crooked smiles that definitely doesn’t make something warm spread in Dean’s chest, every time.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s three months later that Cas and Sam fall asleep during Pulp Fiction (for which Dean will never, ever forgive them), that Dean gets up from the other couch with vague intentions of getting food, and that Cas follows him into the kitchen, a handful of seconds later.

His hair’s all fucked up from the way he fell asleep so, naturally, Dean reaches out and ruffles it with what’s supposed to be a cocky grin that turns out to be a hell of a lot more tender than he intended.

This whole weird thing has been going on for a while now, where Dean and Cas find ways of accidentally falling towards each other, where Cas will reach out and rest his hand on Dean’s, where Dean will press himself against Cas when there’s nothing but daytime TV echoing through their house.

How the hell he ended up with a hand in Cas’s hair, cheek to cheek, leaning against him and letting Cas hook his chin over his shoulder, he’ll never know. Not that he’s complaining. Cas is warm and unusually pliant – probably a result of the fact that he’s taken to actually sleeping – and Dean is kinda really extremely fond of the way Cas just _breathes_ against him.

Dean has (feebly) been trying to convince himself that he’s _not_ hopelessly dependent on both his best friend and his brother for happiness. It’s not working. The fact of the matter is that any way it’s stacked, all he wants is to be around Cas, to live with Sam, to finally be able to breathe without the crushing weight of the Apocalypse on their shoulders. To _exist_. To watch Sam study for his classes at the community college. To help Cas learn how to cook. To hunt restless spirits and shapeshifters and werewolves.

If it’s stacked in the he-kinda-digs-Cas-more-than-he-should way, then he can deal with it. He has been dealing with it, in his own selfish way – stealing quick touches and long looks when Cas is asleep on the couch, memorizing the curves of his face – and it’s taken him a long time to come to terms with the fact that he’s never felt this way about anyone before, however cliche it is.

“When’s the wedding?” croaks Sam from the sofa, all sleepiness and mussed hair. His eyes are barely open but they’re glinting mischievously over the back of the couch.

“Go back to sleep, _Joe College_ ,” Dean snaps. Cas’s quiet chuckle rumbles through his chest and then Dean’s heart stops, because he can clearly feel the soft imprint of lips on his neck. Cas moves back (too far, two inches is much too far away) and Dean just sort of stares at him, wide-eyed, before throwing everything to the wind and pressing his mouth to Cas’s.

It’s rushed and haphazard and he underestimated how close they are and he nearly misses but it’s there, he did it, and his stomach’s somewhere in his throat when he pulls away.

“I–” He swallows nervously. “Okay, shit, is– was that okay?” His voice is barely a whisper and he doesn’t think he’s ever been this nervous over a stupid fucking _kiss_.

And he’s about to start _really_ babbling when Cas snakes a hand round the back of his neck and kisses him right back, slow and deep like he can’t ever remember having been kissed.

It’s– okay, he’ll deny ever even thinking this, but it’s fucking _magical_. Cas feels perfect against him and each movement tingles like it’s statically charged; he could do this forever, but then Sam snorts loudly and pointedly from the sofa.

“Get a room, christ.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Dean hisses at him, and heads for the stairs. Cas frowns at him from the kitchen, amused, with half a grin quirking up the side of his mouth. He doesn’t hear what Cas murmurs to Sam, but Sam half-heartedly tosses a pillow at him so there must have been some kind of revenge exacted.

_Good_.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Cas learns that he’s in love with the clean lines of Dean’s body – point to point, freckle to freckle, jugular notch to xiphoid process to navel, shoulder-rib-hip, and he’s hopelessly lost. He’s in love with the slow, warm slide of skin on skin, unhurried and patient, the way Dean’s fingertips skim over his back and sides, mapping out all of the grooves and dips and curves in the body that’s now his own.

“Cas?”

“Yes?” He kisses along Dean’s throat in a wide arc, out across his shoulder, counting each freckle and swearing to himself that one day, he’ll kiss every inch of the skin that he rebuilt.

“Mmmm. Hey, tell me if I cross a line,” Dean murmurs, one hand pushing through his hair and the other splayed out across his back. Their kisses are soft and lingering, nothing like the filthy, lazy things he knows Dean usually prefers.

“You know I wouldn’t let you get away with that.”

He’s drowning in intimacy of a kind he’s never experienced before; drowning in Dean and everything that he is, from the blindingly white flare of his soul to those seven freckles on his left shoulder that look like the outline of Orion, if he tilts his head, to the tiny, white scar on the tip of his thumb.

The second he’d reached Dean in Hell everything in his world had been upended and he’d been lost in the scramble of doubt and emotion and it’s only now, when Dean presses his forehead into the curve of his neck, that everything straightens out. He would live a thousand Apocalypses and a thousand civil wars if it meant he could keep this, and the simple knowledge of being able to feel this selfishness makes him glow with happiness, that he can _feel_ and it’s Dean, it’s all Dean.  


  
  
  
The wedding, Sam later finds out, is in a year.


End file.
